Arrivee a Paris

DIARY: ARRIVEE A PARIS

I should really be writing this bulletin in French.
For speaking French, I discover, is not at all like riding a bicycle. I have been here 15 hours (most of them asleep) and -- after five years in which the French language has not been a part of my life in any way -- already I’m back to thinking in French, burbling with sufficient cheek if not always absolute accuracy in French, and well on the way back to my semi-bilingualism of the twentieth century.

It is some twenty-four hours since I and my red bag and my green suitcase set out from Oxford.
Elizabeth drove me to the station, and I got myself a twenty pound (!) train-and-tube ticket which would take me right through from Oxford to Paddington and Waterloo/Eurostar. I was just a little bit nervous about the unfamiliar trip, but it turned out a breeze.

I had been warned not to take the ’stopping train’ from Oxford to Paddington, so when the clean, comfortable and empty Great Western (purple, better than Virgin but not as good as Midland) train times for 9.11 came along I (having boarded) got off, to wait for the 9.38 direct. Of course, it didn’t come. Another slow train came and went, I got deep into a conversation with a lad from Poole on his way back to University where he is studying ‘Film’, and still no ‘express’. Thank goodness I had given myself a huge pillow of time! In the end the thing ambled into Oxford station just before 10am, grubby and groaning at the seams. I was lucky to get a seat. Many people didn’t, but, now that I’m 61, I no longer feel obliged to stand up for other folk in trains.

The train (express?!) ambled its way to London, and we got in around 11. I suppose Paddington station has changed a bit, but it seemed just the same to me, and I knew perfectly how to find my way to the underground Bakerloo southbound platform. But it wasn’t until I got into the (half-empty hurrah!) carriage that it hit me. I was in London. Back in London. The city which was my home for longer than any other has ever been. I had a momentary backflash, and a yearning to change trains for Green Park and go ‘home’ to Hill Street, Berkeley Square. All my ‘I’ll never go to London again’ speeches suddenly seemed like so much nonsense. I WANTED to be in London. But, of course, not only do I not have a home there any more, I now hardly know anybody who does. So it would all be different. But, nevertheless, that carriage on the Bakerloo line really broke down a big barrier in my head. In spite of what I have always thought, I COULD spend time in London again.

But that was not for today. Today I was seeing only the underside of London, plus a couple of stations. Waterloo, of course, has changed. The Eurostar installations were not there in my day. And they are almost more like an airport than a train station. You have to pass through’ security’ and through passport control, and then you find yourself in the inevitable tacky shopping mall, reminiscent of EMA. The shops take up so much space that there are insufficient places for passengers to sit and wait, especially when there is more than one train due, and so folk who do not wish to shop or partake of the vastly overpriced food and drink (‘coffee: two pounds off’ off WHAT?!) are obliged to perch on suitcases or the floor.

My nervousness meant that I was in fact two hours early for my train, and I watched instead as the previous one – which was cheaper and which I had refused ‘just in case’ -- went off, feeling just a tad silly.

Even though everyone has numbered tickets, there was the usual old British rush and shove to get aboard once the gun went, fat ladies with ten suitcases of course at the head of affairs. The new fashion in lethal instruments is those vulgar small, hard suitcases with wheels and an expandable handle. More than half the passengers were seemingly equipped with these, but very few of them seemed to know how to drive them. Mostly, it seems, over other people’s feet. My red bag, however, is good defence, and I won several battles with the wheelie brigade.

My heart sank when I boarded. My seat’s ‘foursome’ consisted of myself, a mother of indeterminate semi-Asian features and two little girls. Across the isle was another mama and a very little black boy. Behind me was a bassinette with a bawling baby. It is about time train and plane companies introduced baby carriages, as they used to have smoking carriages.
In the event, the children chummed up with the black mama and played cards most of the way, and I ended up having a pleasant conversation with the mother of the girls who was an English teacher in France, and married to a man who works for .. Apple Mackintosh. In fact, it was my computer which opened our conversation. When I took it out to start putting together my article on Emily Soldene and me for Frank van Straaten’s Australian magazine, the little girl next to me exploded .. ‘Oh maman regarde! Un Apple!’..

Eurostar ran smoothly and on time. Less than three hours the whole trip. And the bit under the water is remarkably short: only about 20 minutes.
Anyway, in spite of the uncomfortable conditions at Waterloo I can confirm that it is definitely more sensible than traipsing to Heathrow and flying to de Gaulle.

At the Gare du Nord, all went smoothly. The meeting between the two men who had never seen the other before went without a hitch. I actually recognised Christophe before he recognised me. Well, I had seen him on TV only a week earlier… also he is taller than most men and has rather distinctive spectacles.

Outside the gare du Nord it was chaos. The taxi ranks were en folie. So, in spite of the red bag and the green valise, we decided to walk a bit. The area in which the Gare is situated is less than delightful, but as we continued south things got better. We passed any number of the Parisian theatres (Renaissance, Porte St Martin, Gaite, &c) that I know so well from my books .. alas few are still proper theatres… and various other ‘familiar’ Parisian landmarks en route. When we reached the Marais we rested our feet for a little and took a refreshing campari at what was evidently a gay café (The marais has become it appears the gay quartier of Paris). Oh dear. It wasn’t much better than the Amsterdam gay bars. No one seemed to be actually enjoying themselves. Rows of mostly very plain middle aged men and gormless youths seated at tiny tables sipping desultory drinks, and looking gloomily out to the street where occasionally more unattractive males, all built on the same dull model and dressed in the same lack-of-style wandered by. I felt distinctly colourful and out of place! As for my red bag…

I was, by now, utterly lost. I know the Marais. Ian and I went there years ago for an exhibition of ... I think it was Fernand Leger paintings. And I found a little shop where I bought some rare French theatre books (now in the possession of Michael Miller) and a bundle of pictures of French singers most of which ended up as illustrations in my ENCYCLOPAEDIA. But if you asked me to place it in relation to the rest of Paris, I couldn’t.

The truth is, I don’t know Paris much at all. I’ve been here quite a few times but, usually, as with so many other cities, it has been a case of airport-taxi-hotel-theatre-restaurant-hotel-sleep-airport-home. Only a couple of times have I wandered around the city to any extent, and they were a very long time ago. Also I don’t think I made it down Montparnasse way. So I have a lot to learn.

Anyway, in spite of our sizeable walk, it was still a taxi ride to the 14th arrondissement which, I now know is in the South of Paris and not very near to the 10th where Ian and I stayed ‘chez Sparrow et Mareuil’ last tie we were here.

I am staying at a ‘petit hotel, pas cher’ very near to the home of Christophe and Jules or Pierre. It is called the Hotel Plaisance and it is in the Rue de Gergovie (which sounds like something out of Asterix). Well, it is certainly petit. And amazingly ‘pas cher’. 44 Euros – ie about $80NZ -- a night with breakfast. It is sort of the utter antithesis to Hoar Cross Hall. It reminds me mostly of the ancient Pension Quisisana in which I stayed in Vienna in the 90s.
The owner is Chinese. The building is old. I don’t know how many rooms there are, but from the old letter rack at the foot of the dark stairs it seems that there have been at some stage quite a few. The corridors look like something out of an old black and white film. Shabby beyond belief. And my room? Number five is about the size of my old bedroom at Gerolstein, with high ceiling and a large double window overlooking the street. It has a good, firm double bed with Chinese-immaculate-laundered linen and a bedcover which has seen better days. It has one small table, one small chair, and a shelf with a rail underneath containing nine wire coathangers. Full stop. There are curtains on the window, but apart from that no decoration at all. No jigsawpuzzle pictures on the wall. Nothing. It is a Bed Room. And why not? Perhaps this is what is euphemistically referred to as a ‘day hotel’?
Number 5 has, however, its own bathroom. A fine, strong shower and new white basin with zinging hot and cold water, a new lavatory and .. full stop. It is equipped with one extra-white towel and two tooth glasses which are not big enough for ones dentures at night. No soap. No plug in the basin (I remember those quirks in other French hotels of 100 years ago…).
So the Hotel Plaisance is, in fact, exactly what I need. A small, clean place to sleep and bathe .. voila tout. Because I am not going to be spending time here. Christophe has a busy time prepared for me: most of the time I am going to be out out out, returning just to sleep and change clothes.

We dumped my bags in my room, I washed my face, changed my shirt and off we went to join Christophe’s partner, (who is either Jules or Pierre ... my hearing let me down) and Berenice the little white ?poodle, at the corner bistro. And there, over a handful of beers – and endless ‘escapes’ by Berenice who is the most sociable and adorable of pooches and who has made a complete conquest of the barman! – my French started to warm up nicely.
However, my deafness and Christophe’s sometimes expansive vocabulary meant that sometimes listening was harder than speaking! But I shall get there! By tonight I expect to be firing on all French cylinders.

From the bistro we moved on to a tiny Italian restaurant for a pleasant meal (calamari and carpaccio de boeuf, with the white wine which I seem suddenly to have come around to) which was interrupted when Berenice decided to go for a gambol and alas I had tied her lead to .. the wine bottle! How dumb can you get! My excuse is that it had been a long day.

A delightful evening, making plans, talking theatre (of course) and books, and – even though Christophe and I have been corresponding for something like five years – getting to know one another…

And then, back to the Hotel Plaisance, number 5, and a deep sleep.

Its 9.30am now. I was up at 7, investigated the bathroom, played with my new face unguents (they really ARE making an improvement) and discovered how difficult it is to shave in a sink without a plug.
At 7.30 I descended for breakfast .. alone. I think there IS someone else staying here. I saw a pair of legs disappearing up to the 2nd floor, but it may have been one of the ruling Chinese family. I also heard quite a noise of tramping feet around 6.30am. But that may have been ditto. (Surprisingly, although Rue de Gergovie is a busy street I heard nothing from outside .. I can now for I have the window open and wailing horns, thumping car radios, squealing tyres etc are the order of the day)
Anyway I had breakfast to myself. One croissant, one piece of baguette, a packet of butter and another of jam, plus a small jug of coffee. Exactly right.
And while I was at it, I persuaded the gentleman who served me (and whose French may not be quite up to mine!) to come up with a bowl. He looked rather blank until I explained that people with false teeth need something in which to soak them overnight. However, I have sussed that I shall also use my precious bowl for shaving in between times!

So now I am back in number five with the diary. Shortly I will package this up and wander forth. Not too far, for I don’t yet have a map and I don’t want to get lost. I shall go to Monoprix and buy a piece of soap! I am due to meet Christophe (who has a meeting this morning) at midday at the bistro, to begin our day and night. It appears the bistro is WiFi, so I should with any luck be able to get a message off to those of you who are on xtra.

Which means I may even be able to get a slightly early ‘Happy Birthday for Wednesday’ message through to mother. ‘Happy Birthday, mum!’.

And until soon
Love
Kurtxx

PS I, who know nothing about such things, have discovered that this Sunday is the first round of the French Presidential elections. The mostly hotly contested election, it appears, in decades. And I shall be right in the heart of it!

PPS I see I have not explained Christophe et Jules-Pierre. Christophe is, with Kevin, one of my musical-theatre bookwriting protégés. We have lived ‘together’ over the past five years his series of professional ‘crises’ just as I have lived with Kevin his personal ones. Christophe doesn’t have personal ones, he and Jules-Pierre (I really must find out which it is) have been together for ages. I will abstain from further detail until I get this name thing sorted out…

Kurt in Oxford

KURTS DIARY. OXFORD.

6am 12 April 2007

Well, Oxford is turning out as big a success as everywhere else..
I am having a simply lovely time

Tuesday, I ventured forth into the streets for a brisk walk round the famous and pretty places of the city. The Mills’ home in Divinity Road is just off the Cowley Road, where so many years ago I came to see Alyn Shipton during the publication of my record book and of the original Encyclopaedia. (Alas, the Basil Blackwell offices are gone, the building now a hulk in the process of modernisation). All of this is easy walking distance – over Magdalen Bridge and down the High – from the heart of town, and I of course duly walked it.

What can you say about Oxford? I could either fill a hundred pages or just take it as read. Suffice it, that I took in a good dose of the most beautiful sights, including the little Queen’s Lane/New College Way and, of course, a quick hello to brother John’s old college, Merton. Oxford has, oddly, changed not at all in some ways, but in others very much. All the old book shops which I used to love have gone. Ebay has I suppose rendered them superfluous and unprofitable. I visited one which used to be on several floors of an old building – it is now reduced to one small room with very little stock and soon I fear it too will be gone.

In the afternoon, I paid a visit to the doctor. I’m not sick – give or take this wretched cold, now nearly a week old and still pestering me – but the blood pressure results at the spa were of sufficient concern to make me think I should at least ask if anything needed to be done. The doctor who saw me, Dr Ross, was – guess what – from Auckland, NZ. He was very kind, and spent some time over me, allowing my bp to come down a little to, in fact, levels no greater than those with which I left Rangiora. And, so, his conclusion was that medication was not (yet?) needed. It appears that my lifestyle (no smoking, no salt, much walking &c) is favourable insofar as ‘risk’ is concerned, and that less stress (which he says may take a while) and less booze (oh dear) would probably bring me down further. Hum. Maybe I shall try it for a little. The no wine bit. The ship seems like a good moment. Oxford is very definitely not!

Back at ‘home’, I dived into the vast collection of Mills family papers that were awaiting me in my attic.
Now, these papers are how and why I am here.
Whilst researching for my future book on VICTORIAN VOCALISTS on the Internet some time ago, I came upon what was clearly a descendant of the very superior Victorian bass-baritone known as Henry Whitworth. I emailed off a volley of facts and queries – as I am wont to do – and thus I came in contact for the first time with Elizabeth Mills.
Now, I’ve done this sort of thing many times in the course of, especially, the ENCYCLOPAEDIA and EMILY SOLDENE, but never with such amazing results as on this occasion. For Elizabeth and others of her family, ancient and modern, have already done a great deal of research into Henry and his very interesting and remarkable career and family connections. Also, Henry himself, between the 1840s and the 1880s, himself collected – nay hoarded – vast amounts of papers concerning both said career and family, from playbills and newspaper cuttings to legal documents and costume designs. These are now in the hands of another of Henry’s descendants, present-day opera administrator Anthony Whitworth-Jones (Glyndebourne, Garsington..) but just for the present they are right here, filling most corners of the room in which I am writing. And I am having a wonderful time amongst this Aladdin’s cave of information. (Thought: why is it Aladdin’s cave? I always thought it was Ali Baba who had the cave, not Aladdin). Also, of course, I am able to identify and explain a few bits.

Anyway, as a result of our correspondence, Elizabeth invited me to come to Oxford during my present cavalcade, so here I am staying in the home of folk whom, until Monday, I had never even met!
However, we do seem to have (perhaps forseeably) ‘clicked’ in the most definite fashion. I feel hugely ‘at home’ with Elizabeth and Allen….
Tuesday evening underlined that in no uncertain way. While Elizabeth and I chatted ‘Henry’ over our pre-prandial sherry, Allen prepared another stunning meal. A dish of sweet mussels with chopped garlic, parsley and other interesting items, followed by a main course of duck, and accompanied by frascati and burgundy..
We dined from 9pm, with conversation, until just before midnight when Elizabeth disappeared towards bed. Three hours later, Allan and I were still at it. Well, I was having simply the greatest time. It is such a joy to listen to someone talking who is .. well, just so very interesting to listen to. Around 2am, I think we were on to comparative religion. Not a subject you would normally associate with Kurt: but I asked…
I can’t remember when I last stayed up till 3am. More usually, that is a time when I awake. Wednesday, I didn’t wake until 9am. Slightly dull in the head, but decidedly contented.

A gentle morning was obviously called for, but around midday Elizabeth and I climbed into her car and set off for a little tour of the eastern Cotswolds. Another really lovely part of England. We began with several little villages, including the hidden away hamlet of Noke and the rather larger village of Islip, where we stopped off at – guess what – the local ‘Red Lion’ for a pint of Guinness. I wonder how many ‘Red Lion’s there are in Britain. Thousands. Maybe someone should make a tour of them all… anyway, Islip’s one is very pleasant indeed.
We rumbled on to the picturebook village of Woodstock, where I peeped through the gates at Blenheim Palace (its 14.50 pounds to get in .. preposterous!) and Elizabeth bought some shoes, after which we headed on to Burford, another remarkable olde Englishe town with a huge and magnificent ancient church towering amongst its other lovely buildings. Although I am not supposed to shop (space considerations), I splashed out on a packet of nice handkerchiefs (1.99) for the benefit of the tenacious cold.

Back from our tour, just time for a small rest, a shower and a change and we were off out again. Dinner and the theatre!
We dined, along with neighbour Janet (from .. Dunedin, NZ), at a very passable Chinese Restaurant (the Peninsula, in a basement, recommended unless you are allergic to MSG) where I was able to sit back and not be challenged by one of those vast menus of incomprehensible things that Chinese establishments seem to feature. Why? Because Allen and Elizabeth are experts on things Chinese, having lived some eight years in Hong Kong.
From dinner, we moved on to the Oxford Playhouse and what turned out to be a mostly competent and occasionally very effective amateur performance of Rattigan’s THE BROWNING VERSION/HARLEQUINADE. I had actually never seen this well-known pair of plays. The first-named piece is rather remarkable. Extraordinarily nuanced and sentimental-dramatic. I, who have mostly thought of Terry Rattigan as a lightweight, drawing-room playwright, FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS and all that stuff (though I do remember the unfortunate ADVENTURE STORY, not to mention BEQUEST TO A NATION and CAUSE CELEBRE and also the exaggeratedly English and rather light-comedy Terry himself) was awfully impressed.
The second play is just a bit of a prank. A slightly over-drawn-out one, too. But it is agreeable nonsense, and the amateurs’ often amateurish way of playing it only added to its flavour.
Anyway, a wholly enjoyable time.. and a much earlier night.
As a result of which I am up at 6am, and all ready for an even bigger jaunt.
Elizabeth and I are off to the Salisbury area, to call on Elizabeth’s sister….
Of which more anon.

Friday 8pm. In other words, ‘anon’.

Well, another wholly splendid day to report. And action packed.
Sister Anni and husband Rob (retired army Colonel) live in the small village of Orcheston, Wilts, which is in the vicinity of the Salisbury Plains and what I now know are the vast army installations there.
You can get there from Oxford either by the quick unpicturesque route, or a series of smaller roads, and Elizabeth chose the latter. It meant that we saw a great deal of pretty scenery, and passed through or near a lot of the towns which I had ‘got to know’ whilst researching Ian’s Berkshire and Wiltshire Winchcombe ancestry, but alas it also meant that we ended up going well out of our way: for in the middle of nowhere, at a hamlet named Great Shefford, we encountered what looked as if it must have been a very nasty road accident. We arrived on the scene obviously just a few minutes after a car had knocked down a cyclist at a T junction. Whatever was under the blankets on the road … it did not look hopeful. The handful of cars which had stopped included a nurse and a registered first-aid assistant amongst their passengers, and everything seemed to be well under control, so we took the T-junction road as a diversion and were solaced to pass, within a mile, police and ambulance heading to the scene.

Orcheston is a delightful village with its houses set on a winding and hilly lane. Some old, some new, some being renovated at huge cost (including the pub which has been turned into a cottage! Oh!) .. and with a large thoroughbred plus veterinary establishment. Anni and Rob have what was once an ordinary 1960s house which they have cleverly transformed into a very fair replica of a country mansion with, notably, a comfortable conservatory where one can sit looking out over a pretty, natural garden, and the English-green fields rolling away into the distance. There is a rumour that the new neighbours dream of llamas. I hope not.

Anni (being the elder sister) was in charge of our day, and it turned out to be a decidedly featureful one.
As with Oxford, I could rabbit on for pages about the beauties of Wiltshire and of Salisbury in particular, but you can see those in any book so I’m just going to stick to a few features of my personal day.
Feature one was undoubtedly lunch. Apparently The Ship Inn at Burcombe was a fluke. Anni had not been there before, the signs pointing to it simply turned up at the time that her mind signalled ‘lunch’. Thank goodness they did. Burcombe is a very small village, and the Ship I would say is a very old pub, perched on the bank on the River Avon. It has a nice green English lawn, overhung by very green English willows, ruffled by only a slight cool English breeze, and the sun was shining. It also makes very nice food. I had a chicken liver salad with onion marmalade plus a pint of my usual and it was all first rate. A grand start to our trip. Except that, when I went to pull out my spectacles to look at the menu .. they came out in two pieces. Why do these things always happen miles from Rangiora and Lindsay the spectacles-mender? Happily, the tiny screw that had come adrift was there in my pocket, so my first memory of Salisbury is a grateful one of the opticians shop which kindly screwed the whole thing back together for me, at no charge.

We strolled around the streets of Salisbury, where I ventured the odd photo of spots that appealed to me – such as the Buttercross and its surrounding buildings – and, of course, ended up where all streets lead to in Salisbury: the cathedral close. As always, Salisbury Cathedral was encased in scaffolding, as the endless work of restring the stone carving goes on, but the spire (so long swathed in metal) has been completed triumphantly, also the front, so the building really does look better than it has for decades.
We did not venture inside the Cathedral (6 pounds) nor into the museum (five pounds), but instead took a wander round the various lovely buildings that surround the Close. Some are leasehold, but some are freehold; some are institutions (like the museum), others are actually lived in .. one particularly lovely brick palazzo by Leslie Thomas. I didn’t realise THE VIRGIN SOLDIERS had sold that many copies.
As we passed the gatehouse of the North Canonry, a lady was polishing the brass plaques alongside the huge C15th or C16th doors. And Elizabeth recalled that she had served on a committee with the gentleman who lived there. The lady vouchsafed he was ‘at home; to us, and so we had the delightful pleasure of seeing one of these glorious ancient buildings from the inside.
Sir Robin Ibbs, sometime chairman of Lloyd’s Bank, and now I would guess in his eighties, is a really charming man. His new (second and decidedly younger) wife, Penny, equally delightful. And their ancient home is stuffed with C17th and C18th portraits, mostly of royalty or aristocracy, from the brushes of such artists as Kneller and Lely. But if the building is beautiful, and its contents stunning, it is the view which is the outstanding feature. From the front windows, you look out upon the green sward of the close and the towering cathedral, and at the back a long and lovely lawn and formal garden (‘the longest herbaceous border in England..’) run down to the edge of the water-meadows of Salisbury. Our hosts walked us right down to the garden’s end and I couldn’t resist snapping a photograph. Social gaffe? Probably. But when will I ever be in such a position again?



The other to be noted incident of our visit to Salisbury was a small decrease in my wardrobe. The Hannah’s slip-ons have performed remarkably. Goodness knows how many hundreds of kilometres they have racked up now. However, socks are something else. Those silky socks which feel so nice? They are not made for walking. Not only do they go to holes, they slide down underneath your feet and have to be endlessly tugged up. Today, I got sick of it and, as we passed a public rubbish bin I stopped stripped off my irritating socks and deposited them therein. A passing gentlewoman looked mildly surprised, but commented with a little smile (feigning to dig in the bin) ‘Oh dear, I just wanted a pair of socks..’. Funny. I’ll bet I remember that lady in umpteen years time when I have forgotten half the glories of Salisbury.

The afternoon having largely vanished, we headed back to Orcheston, a cup of tea, and at 6pm set forth for Oxford .. by the fast route. England really is less huge than one imagines and remembers. We made it from Wiltshire to Oxford in just an hour, to be greeted by a roast pork dinner .. and an earlier night than usual.

Friday, I had two things to do. I wanted to take a few photos of Oxford, and I was booked to visit the offices of the Dictionary of National Biography and the Grove Dictionary of Music, both now under the auspices of the Oxford University Press, and for both of which I am an ‘Advisor’. So around half past nine I headed into the centre of the town.
It is a while, of course, since I was in the offices of a major publisher. Or actually of any publisher at all. When I lived in London, of course, and my books were published by Macmillan, Bodley Head (both within walking distance of my home) and Basil Blackwell (in Oxford), I visited frequently. But since then my publishers have been mainly American companies, so our personal contacts have been almost entirely by mail. I suppose the last time I visited such an office in person would have been when Andrew and I visited the late Stanley Sadie to discuss the contents of OperaGrove .. getting on for twenty years ago!
Well, things haven’t really changed. The office of the late Colin Matthew (the editor of the new DNB who co-opted me, and who died during the dictionary’s compilation) is a model of the genre. I felt immediately at home. What seems to have changed, however, is the average age of the folk working on these ‘big books’. I sort of expected Jo Payne, who has been my contact at the DNB since forever, to be a little lady with little spectacles and a tight grey bun. Nothing of the sort, she is a voluptuous young brunette. And Laura, who has replaced the aged Stanley at the head of Grove, is another fine dashing young woman. Of course, it may be just that I have become twenty years older in the meanwhile ..
Anyway, as I chatted with the young ladies and their associates, I was overcome by a whiff of feeling that perhaps my loudly declared ‘retirement’ was a mistake. Perhaps it still would be fun -- in spite of my loud denials and refusals of the last dozen years or so – to be still part of something like this. Anyway, by the time I left (having talked so much I quite neglected to drink my coffee) I had reiterated that I was retired … BUT that I was still sort of available…
After all, if I don’t decide to go on and complete VICTORIAN VOCALISTS, all the material I have gathered could find no better home than in these two eternal reference works.
Eternal? I think so. For although it is fairly clear that neither the DNB nor GROVE will, under present day conditions, produce another print edition, they will carry on in electronic form. Already, Grove has an editor devoted solely to the electronic side. Sigh. What a revolution in publishing have I lived.

Note: I was delighted to see, on the Grove department’s small reference work shelf.. no less than four volumes by K F Ganzl. And it is terribly good for one’s self-esteem when ladies such as these not only know who you are but are genuinely interested in meeting you! But I am afraid I have entered the ‘venerable’ category. These young people doubtless look at me in the same way that I regarded such venerables of my own younger days as Arthur Jacobs. Ah well. The world keeps turning!

I strolled home via a few photo opportunities, and a nice wine shop (some bourgogne and chablis for the weekend suppers?), to a mighty luncheon, followed necessarily by a mighty afternoon nap … goodness, I could get used to this life! I wonder if there’s an Oxford college which would like a venerable musical-theatre expert on their staff for a term or two!
Dinner was swordfish – delicious! – and a green vegetable which is related to seaweed, has a name something like seraphim, and of which I had never heard. It makes a perfect complement to a fish dish, so I doubtless will encounter it again.

So now it is Saturday. A nice gently sunny morning. Elizabeth and Max the dog have gone out to Demonstrate at a nearby green space which is being threatened by developers; Allen has gone to the market; and I am quietly writing my diary in the kitchen while Katie the gardener does things in the back garden. All very civilised. This afternoon it is the Grand National. I haven’t seen the Grand National in more than 20 years…
And in just 48 hours I am off to France. Oxford-Paddington (train), Paddington-Waterloo (tube, oh heavens, after 20 years the London tube!), Waterloo-Paris Gare du Nord (train) .. the most adventurous bit of travel on my trip so far …

Also a venture into the unknown, for I fear that my ‘petit hotel’ in the Paris 14eme will not be Wi-Fi or Wi-Hi or whatever the official name is, so I may very well fall quiet for a week or two or three…

So, expect me when you hear from me…
And in the meanwhile
As ever

Kurt

Hoar Cross Hall (Part 2)

HOAR CROSS HALL part 2

Friday (Good) 8.40am

It's the start of my last full day here, and right sorry I am for that.
But it’s probably just as well. Enough is enough for now, and I shall be back at the first opportunity, but for the moment...
Well, after feeling bright and sparky and better than since forever on days two and three and even four, yesterday I was definitely not on form. Was the heavy treatment I was asking for too much for my body? Had my new friend and I looked on the wine when it was a little too red? A puzzlement.
But this morning the painful truth became clear. One empty tissue box. I have spent half the night mopping a streaming nose. I have a cold. Not an awful cold. Now that I’m up and hot bathed, and have breakfasted on melon and pastries and coffee, now that I have taken an hour’s walk along the country lanes, I feel just about normal, but it’s a damned shame that nature has seen fit thus to put a small spanner in the works of my really rather successful ‘remake’.

I think I left you just before going to have my ‘reiki’ (I think that's the spelling) treatment. I didn’t recognise the name, but actually, about thirty years ago when I was undergoing treatment for my Bell’s palsy with the lovely Isabelle de Reyher in London, she used me as a sort of guinea pig to try out this new treatment she had just learned. Dangling crystals and magic hands. I wasn’t very impressed with the whole business, and there was no noticeable effect either during or after. So, as soon as I went into the treatment room and saw the dangly crystals, I knew what I was in for. Oh.
Anyway, I lay there for an hour, on my back, with my mind sort of in limbo, while the lady (no girl, this one) presumably dangled her crystals and waved her hands. She barely touches you – and anyway you have all your clothes on and your eyes shut - so, for all I know, she could have been asleep in a corner. I felt very little, and I don’t know whether I’ve had any benefit from it during or after. I’m not saying I haven’t perhaps gained an extra few milligrams of inner strength and calm, but I’m not saying that I have. And I really am a bit sceptical about the dangly crystals.
Anyway, I think I’ll pass on that one next time.

I filled the afternoon with an hour’s ‘deep tissue massage’ (not deep enough for my liking, I’ve requested a stronger girl for today), another session in the water (the novelty of the machines wears off I’m afraid, but I spent 3/4hr being dutiful) and a mini-facial (very relaxing) before heading off to dress for dinner.

Dinner was great fun. The food was fine, but the company was better. My ‘date’ was Mme Chiu Blackmore, previously descrbed, four years a widow, 63, the owner of a small hotel in Yoxford near Aldeburgh, which she is about to sell, to go into retirement in some as yet undecided place. She fancies France, but is rather shy of leaving the known comforts of England.
So I was able to be useful and encouraging there!
The comversation flowed in fine fashion and so did the wine, for I had ordered wine for our meal in the normal gentlemanly fashion. Chiu, as a liberated lady and an hotelier, had done the same! But we managed between us to end up with all *** bottles empty before us before our evening ended. And a very jolly evening it was too.

Oh. I discovered why the room numbers go up to five hundred and something. The handful of four and five hundreds are the rooms in the original old house. Chiu had one. They are rather more characterful and stylish than the new ones and, I doubt not, more expensive. But I think I shall have to investigate for next time! (PS I did, and my room is the same price bracket as the smaller ones up there .. DEFINITELY next time I ask for a 400!)

Thursday, after a rather shortened walk and a rather small breakfast, I lined up for another new experience. My first manicure. Well, it's not something I would do often, but it was rather nice. In fact it was very nice. You get a hand and lower arm massage (since that goes with a facial too, my hands have done rather well), your cuticles brushed back (rather like having ones teeth cleaned with that awful electric brush thing) and then trimmed, and your nails filed, cleaned and ?peeled, then clear-lacquered. The result was quite surprising. My hands honestly look ten years younger. Even the Wee Tree distorted finger looks almost normal. The veins have crawled back to where veins ought to be, and the wrinkles aren’t half so bad. But, of course, the moment I get back on the farm, it will be back to zero.
Part of the package was a free bottle of coloured nail lacquer. I demurred. 'What about your wife?', queried the very young and very sweet Leah. ‘Haven’t got one of those’. (Everyone here seems determined that I should have a wife, and the restaurant staff were all grins when Chiu and I dined together..!). It was easier just to take a bottle and avoid further inquisition, so I am carrying back to New Zealand a bottle of Jessica pale pink nail varnish. I don’t think its Elena’s colour ... and I don’t think I know anyone else who wears the stuff. If there is, speak now!
You know, the more I look at my remade hands, the more I like them. Yes, I shall definitely do that again.

Chiu and I lunched together, and the waitress took a souvenir photo… (see above) .. before she piled into her car to head home to Suffolk and I settled down to my afternoon’s ‘work’.

I had my last big facial. Apparently I am still as dry as fino sherry and ought to be moisteurising for the rest of my life, but I can’t see me doing it. Still, I will go and get some of their shaving oil. I also had a massage from a very little girl who turned out to be quite a powerhouse, and also more informative than some. It appears I’m OK everywhere except in my shoulders. She blames the computers, stress and all the gym work I’ve been doing. The WHAT work?!. So, I have two more massages to be relieved of the ‘knots’ in the shoulders. Including the big deep tissie affair at 11am today.

I skipped my water adventures for the day and chose instead to curl up with a book in the sun in the stately gardens. After which I dined early – the waitress was very solicitous to find me alone again! But I have been promoted to a little table of my own ... in the window! Well, well! – I did the simple smoked salmon and fillet steak thing again, and then climbed the stairs to 214. I was going to do diary and read but by 8pm I was asleep. And by 1am I was awake, greeting the advent of the sneezes and the tissues.

As ever here, after a chilly early morn, the sun is now peeping through and if there is no wind it should be a pleasant day. I shall walk to Hoar Cross village in the afternoon. They have a wee old pub which MUST sell Guinness. (I have filled in the Hoar Cross Hall questionnaire giving top marks almost everywhere, and under Comments/Improvements I have put ‘cut the muzak and get the Guinness in!’.)

Oh. Remember I asked about the muzak in the treatment rooms? I wondered how and when they snuck it in. Well, it's actually on all the time. I just didn’t notice. So it can’t be too harmful. Not there. Again this morning when I descended to the Long Gallery for my morning Internet mail pickup, the night porter leaped up and turned the darn thing on. It's obviously ‘standard practice’. So I’m back in 214.

1 ½ hours till the massage. A walk? I’ve already said good morning to the pheasants and the geese, the ducks and the squirrels, and even though its Good Friday the church is still closed. I shall try it again. I haven’t taken them their little Offering. OK. Off I go. Back with you later.

Well, the church advertises Good Friday, but it's still closed. Still, there are plenty of pretty strolls round the Hall.. and then it was back for my Big Massage. I’d requested the strongest massage from the most powerful girl on the team… and I got it! Wow! If there exists stronger than that (and apparently there does, the men in the gymnasium section do ‘sports massage’ which is the tops for deep digging), I don’t think I want or need it. Sally was perfectly mighty! It was a shame that the whole brilliant session was accompanied by the steady drip drip dripping of my nose on to the floor! And the latest thing – the bang bang banging of a hammer in my head.

I asked at reception for an asprin (I am only carrying anti-inflammatories and prefer only to use them in a really bad moment) and they said they were not allowed to give me one. It’s against one of Britain’s new laws, apparently, to give anyone an asprin or any other ‘drug’ of the kind. I could get some by going to the condom machine in the downstairs men's loo, but the concierge couldn’t give it to me. Is this country insane? I scorned the condom machine and decided to stick with my headache.
However, when I turned up for my 5pm facial, the lassie from Birmingham who did me said ‘ask the nurse’. I did and 2 nurofen (well! aren’t they marvellous things!) had me pain free within the hour.

In between times, I’d gone for my final novelty, the pedicure. Maybe I was getting blasé by this time, but I found this one a bit of a non-event. It was like having the manicure at the other end of one’s body. Same massage, same little cuticle brush etc etc. And ANOTHER bottle of varnish! The girl looked at my feet and remarked what good condition they were in. What! They can’t be. Practically every toe has at some stage been broken, for starters. But all my walking and swimming must have cleaned them up. She could find no dead skin on which to use her heel rasp etc. One got the cling film filled with ‘mask’ wrapped around one’s feet for a bit, but ... well, I didn’t come out feeling as pleased with myself as I had after the manicure. I think the pedicure has to go on the ‘maybe’ list for next time.

I’d decided to skip cocktail hour to nurse the head, but nurofen did its job at exactly 5.59pm, so I descended to the champagne bar (6pm opening) and my friend Dave the barman for the pre-dinner whisky after all.



With no headache and with Dave’s liberal splash of whisky inside me I felt altogether better, the waves of bodily profit from Sally’s supermassage were warming and relaxing me nicely (which of course makes your nose run even more, also the rest of your bodily functions) and so what could have been a rather dismal last night at Hoar Cross Hall turned into a very agreeable one. I had my smoked salmon and filet at my table in the window at 6.30, and then set out to retire for the night. But Dave hadn’t finished with me yet. As I emerged from the dining room, there he was with a silver tray with a huge steaming white teapot which he was taking to my room. I didn’t think it would do his reputation too much good to accompany me to 214, so I relieved him of the teapot and toddled upstairs.
What a star.
Real lemons, heaps of honey, scalding hot water, was that clove? .. and something else which turned the brew a very suspicious brownish colour. My sense of smell is not so hot, so I couldn’t be precise, but let's just say it definitely came from some vessel on Dave’s shelves of magic bottles! (see picture). And I suspect it was related to Napoleon.
So I got into bed with this vast steaming pot of toddy, and chose the passive entertainment of the TV over my E V Lucas book. It was “A Place in the Sun Home and Away” (which made me think, of course, of Gerolstein where it is one of the few TV shows Wendy and I occasionally watch) and the lady was choosing between a rather nasty town in Spain, and Bournemouth.
All this massaging makes you very, very thirsty – I couldn’t count the gallons of water I’ve gone through – or, rather, which have gone through me, sometimes rather swiftly -- this week! – so, as I sat watching the stupid woman clucking on about how she couldn’t possibly consider a house with PVC windows, I somehow managed to empty my teapot. Good grief, there must have been at least six large cups in there.
So, in spite of everything, I slept. And dreamed of lemon trees.

My Hoar Cross Hall adventure was still not quite over.

I had, as yet, one morning to go. So I got one more morning walk, one more breakfast, one more session with the Macbook in the Long Gallery, and, after I’d packed my bags, one last soothing facial from Abbie. Abbie turned out to be the key to my visit to the boutique. I had more or less decided not to buy any ‘products’. I’d been put off by the fact that the Elemis range of men’s stuff seemed to be made up of seven individual lotions and potions, and I certainly didn’t want all that, nor could I carry it in my baggage for the next two months. But Abbie explained that you could be selective. Well, I’d said to myself that if two girls recommended me the same stuff, I would go for it, and Abbie came in with the same list as Sally had done. So I bought a tube of Elemis shaving gel (18 pounds!) and a jar of Elemis SOS cream (after-shave moisteurising) for 39 pounds (!!!!!!!!!).

(Note: I have used them. The gel is sensational. Even with a month old bic razor I got the best shave I've ever had. The SOS will doubtless take a while to do its repair job, but it smells and feels nice.)

Last of all, I went to pay my bill. I’d totted up in my head what it was likely to be, but was perfectly prepared to find ‘extras’ that I hadn’t counted on. So 1500? 1600? 1800? I couldn’t believe my eyes when the piece of paper was handed to me. 1298. Far from there being ‘extras’, I had been given discounts on this and that and the other (apparently because of the 6 day stay) and a number of things I had expected to be charged for weren’t included. Seems, too, that quite a few drinks that I'd thought I was buying, were being shouted to me! Anyway, I was muchly impressed. Another big gold star for Hoar Cross Hall. How pleasing for a customer to find that he feels grateful and positive at the sight of his bill. Someone at this place really knows their marketing and customer relations stuff.
Oh so much is so perfect here .. what a damn shame about the pictures and the muzak!

Just as I was packing away my credit card, Johnny arrived. Perfect timing. We had a brisk tour of the grounds and the spa facilities .. oh I forgot to say that with my receipt I was given 100 pounds worth of gift vouchers for use on a visit by self or friend within the next 6 months. So hopefully – since, barring a change of plan, I don’t think I’ll make it back quite that soon – John and Greg will make use of them. Thus the tour.

And so, farewell and ‘until next time’ to beautiful Hoar Cross Hall.

We took the slow way back to Coalville, investigating a few of the local villages on the way, and I gradually came back into the real world. With a cold.
I spent a gentle day and a half with Johnny and Greg, during which we dined out at the local Indian (they always serve you too much, don’t they), and visited a huge Car Boot Sale (lots of cars and boots!) in a vast field on Easter Sunday. I was there just for the fun of it, as especially with my new Elemis supplies squeezed into the small red bag, I was not in the market for anything that needed transporting. However, I had not expected to find Emily Soldene pictures in a field in Leicestershire! I also weakened over some nice super-light T shirts which might deputise for my badly crushed and overworked NZ ones over the next few weeks. I spent a whole 3 pounds 50.

And then it was good-bye to John and Greg and Coalville for this trip, and off to Oxford. John drove me to Loughborough Station for the 10.30 am train. Only there wasn’t a 10.30am train. It was Easter Monday. Also, the trains were all up the spout. But happily for me the 9.32 to Sheffield, first stop Derby, was running 50 minutes late, so I jumped on that, and shared the 20 minutes trip with a febrile Derby football fan who recounted to me his history as a 40 year football fan. His chief sadness was that owing to newly diagnosed diabetes and kidney problems, he could no longer ingest 8 pints before the match and have a rave with the boys, but was obliged to limit himself to two. I think he might not even have had his two on this occasion, for Derby drew a match they should have won by a street and lost their lead in the nearly-ended championship.

The trip to Derby was however distinctly preferable to the second leg, Derby-Oxford. British trains are no longer all run by the same company. They are like airlines. Anyone can play trains on the rail network. So, for part one I had a very comfortable blue carriage run by Midlands something, for the second leg a narrow, red, rather unpleasant one which was the property of Virgin Railway. It felt so much like a small airplane that I reached for my seat-belt.
It was also full. Mostly of Asians, none of whom seemed interested in getting off at Leamington Spa or Banbury, and only at Oxford did the train half empty.
I remember the days when a theatrical line ‘There are Japanese in Truro these days’ brought a large laugh. These days it wouldn’t raise a tickle.

And so, I arrived safely and on time (for which I suppose the Virgin train must be given some credit) in Oxford, where my friend Elizabeth Mills was waiting to zoom me home to Divinity Road, a pair of slippers, a sweet little attic suite (bedroom, sitting room, bathroom under the eaves and I’ve only crashed my head once!) and the most delicious lunch (home pressed tongue! Oh my Lord!) followed by the most glorious supper (9.15pm, guinea fowl followed by raspberries, the whole accompanied by Frascati and Burgundy..). Elizabeth’s husband, Allen, a very recently retired accountant, apart from being a wonderfully educated and amusing gentleman, is a simply dazzling cook.
Unfortunately, he does not have a (slightly) younger brother…..

Its Tuesday morning now, and Elizabeth has just waved a telephone and booked me to Paris next week.. I’ve been on a quick walk round, and am doing some desk work before a second venture forth…

All of which you will doubtless hear about at length in my next
Until which

Byeee
From
Kurt

Hoar Cross Hall part 1

HOAR CROSS HALL
3 April 2007

9.10am

I’m sitting in the Quiet Room of Hoar Cross Hall. I wonder who thought of this. There are plenty of other lounge rooms in the place, but some clever person has realised at some stage that there are those of us to whom the everywhere-invasive muzak (can it REALLY be officially analysed as relaxing?) is ur-anathema and, were it not for this pretty spot, one would be forced outside or up to one’s room to escape it.
So, here I am, in a splendid reproduction stately home room, busy but tasteful gold, blue and grey carpet, blue brocade furniture, tall blue and white Chinoiserie vases, the sine qua non palms, some nice bits of (reproduction) furniture, and double doors out on to a terrace from where one can wander into the grounds. Very pleasant indeed. And a good spot for me to settle down with MacBook – at a very nice little lacquered writing desk -- and do the diary.

My brain is so full of impressions of the last thirty six hours that it’s quite hard to put it into reverse, but I shall try! Starting with Johnny’s little white van cruising down the driveway and our first glimpse of the Hall. John said it all. ‘Phew’.
It is very lovely. Much more lovely, in fact, than its photos. I haven’t yet delved into its history, but it rather looks to me as if the main building – with its false airs of Castle Howard and its ilk – is nineteenth century, and to that has been added in recent decades, and with almost everywhere enormous tact, a vast additional wing, bigger than the original Hall, which contains the spa element of the outfit plus a large quota of bedrooms. Including mine. I tried to do a count of the number of rooms .. it would seem to be something like a hundred. But you don’t see a hundred rooms’ worth of people around the place: perhaps because there is indeed so much space for everyone to disappear into. Not only in the buildings, but in the grounds. They, like the Hall are a mixture of old and new. Behind the hall are the sort of gardens one would expect in connection with a hall of this nature: the terraced levels of boxed gardens with their featured fountains and statues, their hidden horticultural surprises and, at the far end, the inevitable haha. This haha is rather crumbling (‘do not lean on the haha’ reads one of the seemingly hundreds notices which strew the grounds – I believe the place must employ a fulltime signwriter), and this made me wonder whether I was a bit out with my C19th diagnostic.

(9.30am. Just popped out for my first appointment of the day. Blood pressure test. Yesterday’s results were a bit alarming at 175/105. It must have been the effects of Amsterdam! Or maybe yesterday’s treatments have helped. Anyway I’m back to 157/93 which was just about what I was when I left Rangiora..)

So. Back to Sunday evening. Johnny dropped me at the main entrance. On the doors a huge sign, to follow the various signs down the drive: ‘The most beautiful people in the world walk through these doors’. I begin to suspect that the Hall may be owned by an American. Or Billy Butlin. Am I lacking a sense of humour? This doesn’t seem to be quite the sort of thing I’d expected in a ‘stately home’. Otherwise it seems suitably intimidating, and I think John was duly intimidated! And, yes, me too a little. I make a resolve NOT to be. In 24 hours I will investigate EVERYTHING that goes on here, and not hide away in corners with a book (I have Kevin’s new Kalman biog with me .. in German, which I should really save for the ship) and the Macbook…!

My room is room 214. Officially on the first floor, but the main spa things are on floor minus one, so the numbers are misleading. It is, for reasons unknown, also christened Princess Malissa. All the rooms have similar tags. The one next me is if I remember ‘Countess Chantel’. Sic. And I have also spotted Baroness Maria which is too Sound of Music to be true. I wonder whose idea all that is. It’s a bit Jackie Collins to be comfortable. Coming after the ubiquitous signs of sign-mania, it worries me a tad.
But Room 214 is nice. Not as big as my room in Jersey, but who needs heaps of space in a bedroom when one has endless rooms and galleries and gardens at one’s disposal? It has a good, comfortable double bed with – thank goodness – only the sketch of a canopy. Four posters and the like are far too claustrophobic for me. It has a large wardrobe with (initially) insufficient hangers and a jewellery safe (!)), a large TV, a dressing table rather overloaded with tea-making equipment, hair-dryer, telephone et al, all of which I consign to the floor and replace with the Macbook and camera equipment, a huge fan (which I stick out in the corridor), a table with water and fruit.. and just enough room left for me to weave my way between the items and change clothes etc.
Its all very tastefully done in blue, cream and gold.
Best of all it has windows on two sides, one looking right down the gardens to the haha and the tennis courts, and the other over the roofs to Hoar Cross Church, a picturesque C19th building which, John tells me, gets into a book on England’s top 100 churches.
I will quickly discover that also below my window is the guests’ table tennis table which isn’t used much by the guests but quite a lot by the teenaged waiters, and also the back door of the kitchens where said waiters and waitresses anre wont to gather for a good horse-around and shriek. This bothered me until I got to know the joyous young folk a little, now it doesn’t worry me at all.
The bathroom disappointed me. It has a bath with a hand shower, a toilet, a heated towel rail and a small basin. Fullstop. Nowhere for one to soak one’s teeth at night, nowhere to stash one’s sponge bag and its contents, except a tiny glass shelf. And, oh horror! In a rare display of ghastly taste the suite is cream ... covered with pink floral garlands!!!!!!

After unpacking, the bathroom was my first venture. A shower was the order of the day. So I turned on the taps. I thought Lucille’s shower had power? This one is a learjet in comparison. The water spurted out like a broken mainpipe, the showerhead leaped from its holder, and snaking round the silly glass partition and ineffective curtain proceeded to do an imitation of a hyperactive fire hose, flooding the whole room with scalding water! I dived bravely past and turned off the taps .. which I now know that one turns on only by a matter of millimetres to get a nevertheless powerful shower. Oh well, hopefully everything (including my towel ration – one er week for ‘conservation’ reasons!) would dry out by morning… and at least most of the travel stain had been washed away..

And so, I was ready to sally forth. First, to the long gallery. This is the genuine long gallery from the old house, facing out to the front of the Hall, filled with nice comfortable dark couches, a table where hot drinks are permanently available, a little stage with a grand piano etc and, unfortunately a TV set. Everyone has one in their room, why must we be afflicted by a public one? And, while we’re at it, I’ll get my one other shudder out of the way.
The photographs. Now, this place has everything it needs to be considered the genuinely classy outfit they clearly aspire to in their ‘stately home’ advertising. Almost everything has been done in good taste and with a feeling for period and style. Which means that the odd super-vulgarity, like the photos, stands out like a chimpanzee’s derriere in a mink factory. What are these photos? Well, first of all we have a truly awful plastic (airbrushed?) one of The Founder and Wife. (They are repeated in truly awful oils in the dining room). I know, I guess that’s inevitable, and if it were the only one you could just avert your eyes and hurry past. But the others? The others are aggressively-framed, aggressively-signed photographs of the various so-called ‘celebrities’ who have visited the Hall. The first one I bumped into – and you can’t avoid them, they cover every flat surface in sight – was Pam Ayres.
Oh dear. Very stately. Very classy. Very Butlin's.
Anyway, end of shudder. And actually there won’t be many or maybe even any more. Which makes it all the more a pity that this one had to happen.

The back half of the main floor, which was once the ballroom and the library, now consists of a very elegant dining room, plus what is called ‘the champagne lounge’. The bar. A small corner bar, lots of comfy furniture and – books! All round the walls, books.. Not old old books, but everything from Victorian novels (apparently, from the prices, bought in bulk as decoration) to more recent volumes, left I imagine by previous visitors in the same way as on the ships. I lighted quickly on a copy of F Marion Crawford’s The Diva's Ruby, which I am pretty sure I have read before, but anyway its perfect reading for the stately home atmosphere.
The champagne lounge (which unfortunately is the Hall’s one ‘smokers’ room) also has Wireless Internet, so of course I am obliged to go there from time to time. Dave, the baby barman, already knows me well….

My first encounter with Dave was, however, a bit of a disaster. Guinness was ‘off’! Apparently the brewery finds the Hall is not a big enough customer to service. To get one’s favourite tipple, one has to walk down the lane to the local. I was in no mood for that on Sunday night, so settled instead for a pint of Worthington, the Internet and The Diva's Ruby, before venturing to the dining room for a 7.30 dinner.

It seems that out of the whole guest list of Hoar Cross Hall, I am the only ‘single’! A few m-f couples, Mother-and-daughter pairs (special offer) and parties (almost all all-female) are the order of the day. They don’t even have single tables. What would Terence Rattigan say? Ah well, ‘singles’ obviously aren’t going to get seated in the big windows overlooking the garden, even if they are staying for a week. But I have that view from my room, so I don’t care, and I am perfectly contented with my little table in the ballroom fireplace.

The menu is fairly large, and also decidedly attractive. Lots of things that I like. I shall do something different each day. Day one, I will play it safe. Smoked salmon cornets stuffed with cream cheese, followed by noisettes d’agneau. Much to my surprise, the nice young waitress asks me ‘how do you like your lamb’. Very pink’ I say hopefully.
And what do you know, it comes .. very pink! Amazing! Also very delicious. A really nice meal, served with just enough speed and not too much, and with a very obvious concern for health. The vegetables are even more lightly cooked than I could have dared to hope for, sauces are on the side etc etc. What an exceedingly good start (if you forget the shower incident and the Guinness episode).

By the time I’d finished dinner it was too dark for a stroll round the grounds, so I decided to leave that for the morrow. Plenty of time over the next days to cover a paltry 100 acres…
My head hit the pillow at 8.45. And I slept till dawn.

A little before dawn actually. For I was up and about at 5.45. A brisk battle with my Laocoon-ic shower, into shorts and T-shirt (standard daytime gear here for the handful of male customers .. the women hide themselves – mostly wisely -- under vast towelling bathrobes) and off on my first voyage of discovery. Coffee with the Macbook in the Long Gallery (much to the surprise of the cleaning staff), then a dawnlight stroll through the man-madeish woodland walk. In fact it seems to have been made by men such as Gerald Durrell and Walt Disney. As I turned corner one, I was greeted by a beautiful pheasant poised on a bench, at turn two a family of scampering grey squirrels and a horde of colourful ducks .. delightful even if in the almost-too-picturesque-to-be-true mode. When it all grows just a little more ‘natural’ the wood will be a great asset. For now, I only wish they hadn’t planted the daffodils in such very straight rows!
From the woodland walk, you look out as well over long green Staffordshire fields… really lovely. This will be a daily event.
Back through the well-kept gardens and lawns and through the wee wooden gate to the church. Alas, the church is closed. Maybe I am a little too early for the churchwarden.
Breakfast is served from 7.30am in the ‘Plantation Room’ which surrounds the clover-shaped swimming pool in the treatments and activities area downstairs. I arrive at 7.29, and have the whole place to myself. Seems the kind of people who come here are not early risers. Good! I shall have lots of bits to myself…
Danish pastry, coffee, bacon (almost as good as Lucille’s), sausage (fat-free), scrambled egg .. OK, don’t believe me, but I did. Condemned man’s last breakfast? A bit. At 9am I start being ‘treated’ and the first stop is a session with the medical department. For if you have ‘things wrong’ there are certain activities you are not allowed to do. And I am pretty sure that my blood pressure is going to be frowned upon.

My nurse is Kate. She takes the vast form which I have filled in – its almost all ‘nos’, just my ancient heptatis, the cholesterol pills, and a few back strains and pains to admit to. And the blood pressure. Which she takes. And dammit, its UP. Must be the plane trip. Or something.
Under ‘why are you here’ I have ticked nearly all the boxes from ‘relaxation and pampering’ to ‘stress’. She hones in on the ‘stress’. Now, I have already worked out, practically word for word, a very concise answer to this obviously expected question. Recent death of partner after long term caring. Fullstop. But it goes wrong. Just like on that very first Saturday at the Motukarara trials when I tried to tell Gavin Cook what had happened. My lip starts to quiver and the next thing I am in tears. Bloody hell.
So, in spite of the fact that I insist that I ‘am all right except when I have to talk about it’, I get 10 out of 10 for ‘stress’ and am booked in for something called Raeki which sounds a tad mumbo-jumbo to me. She also suggests that I try yoga (I can’t even do the lotus thingy, I tried years ago) and/or other related exercises. But, in the end, it is to be Raeki and perhaps the attending of a few stress lectures. I know I won’t go. The lectures, I mean. The Raeki is a ‘pay’ job. Oh well, I’ll try anything once. Look at the miracle that the hay fever injections accomplished.

From Kate, I go to Kerry Ann for my first Deep Tissue Massage. 55 minutes. Kerry Ann is very tall, very slim, and very delightful. We go up some stairs to a ‘cell’ with a massage table and I strip off while she glances down my half-filled form (ANOTHER one) and asks a couple of questions. Including the wrong one and damn and blast there I am in tears again. But, it appears, she is quite used to such things, and on we go.
Splendid, relaxing massage. Perhaps a little more forceful than what I am used to, but not as forceful as I’d expected. I think maybe she was told to not press too many buttons just yet. Feet first, then back of legs, then back/shoulder/neck (ouch!) finishing off with the front of the legs.
This is all new for me. Caryl’s massages at Gerolstein have always been in relation to some specific ache or injury. I’ve certainly never had my legs massaged. It doesn’t do nearly as much for me and my well-being as the neck-shoulders-back bit. But the progression from feet to head evidently does do something ... I was so away ‘out of this world’ that I didn’t even notice till halfway through that there was muzak going! In fact I’m sure there wasn’t. They must have sneaked it in in mid-course!

From the massage I moved on to the hairdresser. Being photographed alongside Kevin and B-J is not good for any vanity one may have, and the pictures made it quite clear that what is left of my hair had not travelled well. So, damn the price (and this week I ain’t counting ..), I went to Emily the hairdresser who not only sheared me, but thinned and defluffed my ‘fluffy’ locks and did things to my eyebrows…
Of course, hairdressers always ‘make conversation’. I tried manfully to steer the chat away from anything that might start me quivering again, and we got to the end in one piece.
But goodness, when she had finished I looked so much better! This morning had been a thorough success. And it was lunchtime already!

Back to the Plantation Room where hot and cold buffet luncheons were being served. I satisfied myself (lunch, for heaven’s sake!) with cold meats, mint potatoes and some smashing salads – cucumber salad, olive salad –

No more official appointments till 5pm, so I decided to spend the first part of the afternoon walking in the Staffordshire sunshine (camera at my side, just in case the pheasant came out again) after which I would investigate the watery underworld – the pools and spas only, for Kate has – because of the blood pressure -- banned such heat treatment as saunas, so I shall not get to have my first sauna after all.

So I set off outfrom the front door of the Hall, heading for the gardens. I don’t know what made me turn down the little path leading to the churchyard. After all, I’d been there that morning and the church had been closed. But this time it wasn’t closed, and I went in.
I don’t wholly remember the next bit. I just know that I –the lifelong atheist – ended up on my knees on a prie-dieu, before a nave with a stained glass window and a carved crucifix, sobbing my heart out in a way that I haven’t done since the second week of last November.
I didn’t even have the wryness and the self-possession to step aside and say to myself, ‘this is just too too Manon Lescaut to be true..’, I just cried and cried and cried. For me, for my dear little man, for me, for me and for me.
Afterwards, I thought ‘I’m glad no-one came in’, but truthfully I wouldn’t have cared a fig if they had.
I don’t know how long I stayed there. Ten minutes? Fifteen? Maybe more. But when I had cried my fill, and got up, the conventions and decencies of this world got the better of me. Idiot that I am. Instead of wandering on to the populated gardens with my rather too obviously tearstained face, I scuttled back to my room.

Why did it happen? Five months down the line and pretty much out of the blue. Was it that the massage had loosed me up not only physically but emotionally? Or was it just ‘talking about it’. And did it do me any good, that big weep? I don’t know. I haven’t trembled again since, so maybe it did. But what does it matter. It happened. It may happen again. It may not. And that won’t matter either. But I don’t think I’ll be able to watch Manon ever again with quite the same equanimity.

And I think I shall pop back and put a little something in the church box. What for? I don’t know. But I shall.

I’d determined that by the end of Day One I was going to have tested ALL the permitted facilities, so round about 3pm I fished out my smart, new, baby blue Yves St Laurent swimsuit and headed for the ‘wet area’. Gentleman Residents Changing Room. Odd that. Why wouldn’t one just slip into one’s gear in one’s room, sling on the provided towelling gown and trot on down? But I suppose one would still have to leave the gown somewhere... and I, of course, my spectacles.
In I marched. No one there. Some lockers. You have to tap in a 6-tap code of your own invention to lock them and then repeat the same code to open them. This does not take into consideration people with glasses who have to put their glasses inside and then tap the bloody numbers when half-blind. The keys do not have Braille. I solved this by using a series of ‘ones’, which I suppose others have done before me. OK, I’d got this far. What next? I stood there looking around at the multitude of doors like Alice lost in Wonderland. For a place that is so huge in ‘signs’, it seemed, when I wanted a sign, that I couldn’t find one.
Suddenly a jolly, plump, naked and very little man appeared before me. ‘Lost?’ he inquired, like a helpful gnome. I imagine it’s a question that gets asked a lot around Hoar Cross Hall with its multitide of corridors and turnings. ‘Yes, lost’. He knew all the answers, and as he waddled off, I set on my way. Swimming pool. Only 3 ladies in it. Where are all the people one sees at dinner, but never otherwise? I loll around for ten minutes. Swimming isn’t really my thing, not aimless swimming, and the water is sort of luke cold. I shall try the Water Grotto, which Kate sort of suggested as ‘good for me’, instead.
You sit with your feet in warm water and get them massaged by the bubbles. Nice enough but I’ve done that at the motel in Westport.
What's that over there with water flying everywhere? A plump lady emerges, gasping, from the cylindrical room where the action has been happening. ‘Have you used this before?’ she puffs. I admit ‘no’ (and have a vague remembrance that Kate said maybe I shouldn’t). You push the button, grab the wheel in the middle and walk round while the water sprays at you. Seems harmless enough. So I press the button and march in. OK, it’s a multi-level spa-sical power-shower times ten. A six foot high spa-bath. But I‘m not into the walking bit. You walk in and out of the jets too quickly to appreciate them. So I develop my own system, which I’m sure Kate wouldn’t approve, spending a wee while standing in each separate jet. Up down, up down, squat sits, letting the water jet pulverise your spinal column. Good fun. But the machine only lets you do it for a limited while, then cuts out. I guess it knows best.
There were one or two other like machines in the grotto, but I didn’t think any of them looked any better that this one, so I toddled back for a cool-down in the pool and then decided that I’d done enough obligatory water-work and headed back to the changing rooms. First I had to find my locker and I’d used the wrong ones, but I got there, my code worked and I got out my clothes and my robe, my watch and – hurrah! – my spectacles, changed and, last of all, put on my espadrilles. As I stood up, I looked once again around the myriad of Wonderland doors with an apparently bemused face, because suddenly I was looking straight into a huge hairy chest and a deep voice said ‘Lost?’. From gnome to Titan. I grinned foolishly and said ‘um, semi-lost’, spotted my door and bolted for it while the naked giant lumbered away.
There can’t be more than a dozen male guests in this whole place. Why do I have to meet the most extreme of them when they have no clothes on!???????

There wasn’t much pause for reflection thereafter. For at 5pm the residential guests foregather for their ‘free’ treatment (free? Huh!). That is to say, included in the room price is a 25 minute session of massage or facial each evening. Since I’d already had my Deep Tissue massage for the Day, I opted for the facial. I don’t know what I’d imagined it was. I know ladies have them. And I remember the ugly sisters at Gerolstein covering their faces with white goo and cucumber slices. In their case it didn’t seem to achieve anything concrete. So what was I about to get? Hopefully, a shrinkage in my puffy eyes and black circles…? Apart from some pretty gaping pores, I didn’t think much more was wrong with my face. Give or take the inevitable signs of age.
Hmm.
First, of course, the inevitable questionnaire. Q: What do you use on your face? A: Soap and water. This is not a satisfactory answer. Soap is apparently alkali when your face needs acid. Or vice versa. Shaving? Same soap. A crime! I admitted to 25 years in New Zealand, several at sea, and Sally sighed. She had lived for a year in New Zealand and knew about the ozone layer. Seemingly I was a bad case. Not to forget 61 years old.
You lie down for a facial and I soon find out why. It's as much a hefty neck massage as a skin improver. But the liquids went on, one after the other, warm cloths removed them ... it was a very enjoyable feeling ... fingers glid into the different areas of my face (get into those bags, please!) and again I didn’t even notice the muzak. Tomorrow I shall listen for when they sneak it in.
All seemed straightforward to me. But Sally didn’t think so. ‘You have got incredibly dry skin’, she hectored me. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to have had all those applications of liquid. One application is intended to stay on the surface for the whole session. My hungry skin had gobbled it all up.
She has given me a shopping list. Shaving OIL!!???!! Moisteurising something or other and something or other else. All, of course, from the range produced by Elemis, the firm which has a boutique on level one and whose vastly expensive products the girls use here (Kerry Ann had Elemissed me too). Hmmm.
Well, I have The Big One-Hour facial tomorrow. Lets see what the result of that is!

The umpteenth shower of the day, then into what I am trying to make at least look like fresh and different clothes for the evening. Down to the champagne bar with the MacBook for the evening’s email and Internet check-in, and a pint of Worthington (it just isn’t Guinness, I’m afraid).
A group of ladies .. I’ll rephrase that, a group of large women with pina coladas, cigarettes and strong provincial accents ask if I’m on my own. I say ‘yes’. ‘Left your family at ‘ome then?’ ‘Haven’t got one’. ‘Ooo’, says the plumpest damsel, who is probably only about 30 but looks more, ‘I oughter call my mum and get 'er up ere quick’. It is on the tip of my tongue to bat back the obvious response, but I am feeling mellow, so I simply turn round the computer with its desk-top picture of Elena and Merry and Roxie showing. ‘Here’s my family’, I grin, ‘more girls than I can cope with.’

I had my little table in the fireplace again for dinner. I hope I keep it all through my stay. Fate willed it that one of the tables across the aisle was occupied by my friendly giant, so I was able to check out the top and bottom ends of him. He looks like a Turkish wrestler. Bald head, just needs an Ilie Nastase (no, it was his doubles partner.. um..) moustache. And his wife, classically, is a tiny svelte lady of about 23 who looks like a Roumanian gymnast both in figure and face. Give or take a good Jewish Barbra Streisand nose. Imagination is a fine thing. They are probably both schoolteachers from Nottingham.

I have moules marinière for a starter. The sauce is absolutely delicious, but the mussels .. well, its Jersey all over again. They just don’t grow those big, juicy shellfish that New Zealand produces, over here. These are quite sweet, but definitely small.
Then I get daring. Since the chef had been so successful with his pink lamb, I ordered a fillet steak. ‘Blue blue blue. Walk the cow past the fire and chop a bit off’, I instructed. When it came, I gasped. If they grow their mussels small here, they grow their fillet steaks huge. But it was fillet all right. And it was blue, blue, blue and first-rate. Green pepper sauce on the side, a crisp little salad, a glass or two of house red. Perfect.
After the sorbet, I pop back to the bar for the complimentary glass of champagne offered by the management for those who dine early.
(I have found out where everyone is, by the way. 90 percent of the guests breakfast, lunch and dine at the very end of the service period.. I, of course, always do so at the very beginning... so much the better for me! And this is the management’s way of trying to make some of the late birds come earlier).
One of the kitchen staff is there getting a wine order. 'How was the steak?’ he asks. I tell him and he grins. ‘I saw it coming off the grill’ he says ‘and I asked who it was for. I like my steak like that and I don’t know anyone else who does’.
Good lad.

I thought of settling down in the bar for a read, but alas the bandstand was taken over by a couple of truly dreadful vocalists, whining out classic numbers of yesteryear to a feeble guitar with the aid of an excessive microphone. My ears were being dreadfully offended. I could perhaps have borne it without the microphone, but no…
I packed up the Macbook and the library book and fled to Room 214.
Fifteen minutes later I was asleep.

Tuesday dawned bright and early and I dawned with it, around 6.30. It was pretty grey outside, but the night porter – who was the only human in evidence when I arrived in the Long Gallery for camomile and Internet – said it was actually warmer than the previous day. And turned on the muzak. ‘Don’t do that for me’, I said hopefully. ‘Oh, it's all right’, he proffered. It wasn’t, of course. So I downed my tea, checked out the mail –  and went for my walking shoes.

The delightful Steve from Yoxall (a waiter of about 16 summers with a spiky hairdo) had, last night, described to me a walk around the outside of the grounds, so I headed down the drive and turned – which way had he said? – I went left and saw a sign about a bridle path, so I followed. It took me through bits of Hoar Cross Hall’s grounds I hadn’t yet seen including a very swish little golf course, and dumped me on a pretty back road. I marched on past a couple of lovely homes, a couple of fields containing disinterested horses (I am missing my ‘horse’), and then came upon Hoar Cross Nursing Home, a decidedly flash establishment in an old building (with serious extensions) which looks out over some glorious Staffordshire fields. ‘Be nice to be able to afford to be old there’, I thought.
However, it soon became obvious that I was not on Steve’s ‘walk’. The road began to fizzle, and the sky began to drizzle, so I turned round and got back home after little more than half an hour’s jaunt. In plenty of time for breakfast.

With the blood pressure in mind, and a total faith in the cooking in this establishment, I decided to forget the Danish and the bacon and eggs and go for another dangerous dish. Poached finnan haddie with egg ‘to order’. Well, they did it again. The fish was superb, and the only criticism I could make (heavens, I MUST make some..!) was that the egg wasn’t soft enough. Wendy could teach them a thing or two on egg-poaching.

And this is where we came in.
After breakfast, to the Quiet Room with the diary, then to the nurse for the good blood pressure news. Back to the Quiet Room which, with the influx of the day’s visitors, becomes less quiet. Somone doesn’t know the house rules, or doesn’t care. Groups of loud ladies sweep in and mostly out. ‘Ooo they’ve only got the Daily Telegraph. I can't read that!’. They all have the same accent and the same intonation. They all sound like Mollie Sugden on a loud day. The half-dozen of us who have been enjoying the quiet (I was even worried about the tapping of my fingers on the computer keys!) make a mass exit. Even that doesn’t sink in to the skulls of the Mollies.

By now it has decided to rain, so outside activities are a no-no. There is muzak in the Long Gallery, and there are Mollies in the Quiet Room. I could go down by the pool with MacBook and do the diary there, or I could go back to 214. 214 and its view win, and I see out the morning writing my diary to the accompaniment of endless camomile and in perfect peace. For the rain has put the table tennis table into abatement.

Lunch. Do I really need lunch? Yes. I am doing everything. I shall go down and just have a sandwich… But there is a steaming beef and English ale pie with mint baby potatoes. Why resist?

My treatments today are at 3pm and 5pm, so I shall get in some water-sport between lunch and then. Today I shall not take my glasses, and not use a locker. I shall change into my togs ‘at home’, pop on the robe and espadrilles, take my shorts under my arm, and voila... That works much better.
Things are not very busy. One young, plump (of course) blonde lass and I have the thing just about to ourselves. I plough back and forth in my inept breaststroke until I am bored and then head for the Grotto. Today there is a thing working where you sit on a tiled ‘chair’ and warm water is poured down your neck and back. It's amazingly restful. Then I take a turn in the high pressure room. And I discover that if you go back and forth between the two -- the belting and the gentle, the warm and the cool -- it induces an amazing glowing sentiment of ‘being alive’. Water was never like this before…
And suddenly an hour has passed. So back off upstairs to get ready for my Ocean Facial.

Andy is my facial artist. Another charming young woman with magic hands. I don’t have too much idea what happened during the nearly an hour I was under her hands. All sorts of things were poured and massaged into my face and shoulders and arms and hands.. and finally a pottle of blue gluey stuff, the colour of a new horse coat, was daubed onto my face. I was waiting for the cucumber slices, but they have little cottony pads instead. What the heck, I just lay back and let it happen!
So has it done anything?
Well, I certainly have a distinct glow. I am undoubtedly cleansed and astringed and goodness know what else. Combined with the haircut ... yes, I do look noticeably better than 48 hours ago. But the bags and circles are as real as ever. Can’t expect miracles, I guess.

After only an hour’s respite, it's time for the daily massage. There seems to be a principle that you don’t get the same girl (there are no men) twice. Today it is Rebecca: petite, brunette, heavy spectacles ... reminding one rather of Lois Lane in the Superman film. When it comes to the massage, it's more like Superman himself. Wow! Where does she get all that strength? This time it was no holds barred, and my tender spots really jumped. Blimey... tomorrow I have an hour of that!
Heaven!

At dinner, I have been moved out of the fireplace. One row closer to the windows. I think it is promotion but, anyway, it's nice. Tonight I am not the only single (also, oddly, midweek seems to have attracted a few more men than weekend)... there are two ladies alone. One of them is a very attractive Asian lady who reminds me of Nobuko Albery, also of a handsome Chinese Duchess I met 40 years ago in Monte Carlo.
We encounter each other in the bar at postprandial champagne time and get acquainted. She is Chiu, she is Malaysian in origin, and she lives in Yoxford in Suffolk where she has a small hotel. She is in her 60s, and four years a widow. She has also recently been to Christchurch where she went racing. So we have a lot to talk about. Which we do. And we will abandon our ‘separate tables’ and dine together tomorrow night.

Sigh. Just the kind of man I wondered if I might meet here……..

Wednesday morning 8.40am.
It’s a cool, greyish morning.
I’ve been through the morning shower routine (6.30), twice round the woodland walk (6.50-7.20), picked up my only morning email (Kevin) in the Long Gallery, and lingered over tomato juice, a pot of camomile – my new vice – and a couple of sausages in the Plantation Room 7.35-8.30. The weekday people seem to start a little earlier than the other lot, too, there are quite a few pairs and groups of women – and wot! one pair of men! – swathed in gowns apparently ready for action. No-one in the pool yet. Maybe I’ll pop down and do my water routine. I’m quite keen on it now, after yesterday’s experience.
My first appointment is at 11.15 for the Raeki. I’m a bit nervous about this one. It's apparently not just a lie there and let it happen job like the massages and the facials, apparently you have to do something active or interactive. Weaving together of body and spirit stuff. Hum. I have a feeling it's going to be tears before lunchtime.

Oh well, I have two hours after that (give or take lunch) before my big massage, so if I get all stirred up I shall go for a long wak in between. I’ll fit in the water thing between 3 and 5, then at 5 it’s the daily facial. Tiens! Wht a busy life. And I haven’t even tried the ‘toning tables’, whatever they are.
Given that all this is coming up, I think I shall just curl up in the library with The Diva's Ruby until 11 o’clock and the Raeki experience.


Wish me luck!


Kurt


PS Precisions on Hoar Cross Hall. Dave, for whom nothing is too much except producing Guinness, found me an historical article on the place. There’s been a Hall here since 1740 and latterly one Hugo Meynell lived in it. Why do I know his name? But this one was built in 1871 and ‘on a clear day you can see Lichfield Cathedral’. The church, which is called Church of the Holy Angels, was built immediately afterwards. The place has been through a few horrors since the Meynell family left in the 1950s, including a weird bunch of monks who let everything fall apart and later mediaeval Banquets. Mr Joynes (he of the photograph and oil painting) bought it in 1989 and the spa, as it is now, opened up in 1991. So now we know.

Amsterdam to Staffordshire

KURTS DIARY AMSTERDAM to STAFFORDSHIRE
2 April 2007

What has happened to the days?
No diary since last Wednesday, and here we are Monday already..
A fine, sunny English springtime morning in Staffordshire

But Thursday Friday Saturday and much of Sunday were of course spent in Amsterdam, the second part of my Holland adventure..
By and large, the second part was very similar to the first. Much music, much chat .. and also much much exploration and open-air strolling. Given that I and the genus bicycle had failed to come to an agreement, said exploration and strolling was all on foot, and truthfully so much the better. You see so much more, become part of things so much more when you walk. But I did ‘travel’ once.
On Thursday, we took a a nice, clean modern tram. We took it, because we were going a little further afield than heretofore: over to the Westerpark where Bert-Jan’s business is based and where Kevin – away from the temptations of home -- does much of his writing work. Said business – homed in what once once a stunning red-brick factry building, is named with intentional irony De Kunstfabriek: the art factory. One manufactures art? The two ideas and the two words seem in direct contrast. But the description is correct.
De Kunstfabriek is an art gallery, but not a conventional art gallery. And the items which are on display there are not conventional ‘paintings’. The process of producing one begins with a photograph (usually taken by Bert-Jan), which is then processed into a picture (mostly I think by Bert-Jan), after which the processed image is sent to China where a team of classically-trained artists transform it into a regular oil painting. As in the traditionally-made Balinese paintings, each painter on the team has his special area – hands, feet, hair, flowers, fruit or whatever – so the final work of art is a genuine team effort and is signed only with the logo of the Kunstfabriek.
I know. You will be saying this doesn’t sound at all like something Kurt Gänzl would like. But you’ld be wrong. The interest lies mainly in the choice of image, and the way whatever the subject of the picture is is photographed and viewed. And just a little (for me) in the way the painters use their technique to produce what are sometimes startling images. My particular favourite was a sheet of red and yellow apples. They looked as if one could reach out and pluck them. None of the poised sterility of an old-times still life… these apples were alive.
Give or take a vast series of cows (argh! too close to home!!!), I liked these ‘living’ pictures the best, although I who have always scorned the famous Warhol soup can as gimmickry at worst and fraud at best, found a number of pictures of modern utilitarian object and of commercial products which, whilst obviously descendants of said soup can, were more interesting. Why? Because they were taken not square on, but from droll angles. Or not in full frontal toto, but only in part.
I was, I have to admit, altogether less taken with a series of pictures which clearly descended from Warhol’s other big picture, the wonky Marilyn Monroe, and depicted such other camp divas as Lauren Bacall. However, to some people, these are obviously appreciable and decorative. And therein lies the appeal of the Kunstfabriek’s production. Decoration.
If I were a young or even not so young person with a fine modern home and fine white walls to fill, I would rather fill them with the Kunstfabriek’s apples and carrots, Spa water bottles and can openers, than I would with old masters or even with the sort of pictures which fill the walls at Gerolstein.
You see, its never too late to learn!

See www.dekunstfabriek.com/

While Kevin sat down to translate a review of one of those touring operatic megaproductions which I hoped had died out with the 1980s (a German AIDA MONUMENTAL OPERA ON FIRE at .. Abu Dhabi! in which the fire trick was hilariously quenched by the desert winds!) for a German website, I set off for the daily explore. Down through the Westerpark, where the daffodils were already waning, into an untouristicky shopping street, the Haarlemsdijk. Quite fun, quite ‘typische’, but also quite ordinary. The Haarlemsdijk runs down – way down -- to the Central Station and, as I got near its end, its character changed. Finally I was in the sort of Amsterdam I didn’t really want to see. Tacky shops with names like ‘The Magic Mushroom’ (in English, of course) and … well, just an aroma of the sort of seediness I hadn’t really encountered here. Two teenaged Chinese girls who evidently mistook me either for an habitué or a local (in spite of the street map under my arm!) asked me the way to the Red Light district. How would I know?
Anyway, it was clearly time to get off the Haarlemsdijk and away from the station, so I took a right turn and .. . within metres of this ‘bad bit’ I found myself in one of the loveliest little bits of the city I had so far found. The Browuersgracht (wouldn’t you know! It means ‘the Brewers’ Canal’!). Its not picture-book pretty, its not even what you might call operetta ‘Dutch’, MISS HOOK OF HOLLAND and all that, its just nice. Real. Tall, confident old houses overtowering an attractive canal lined with houseboats, grnd and grotty, and every few metres a quaint little bridge spanning from one side to another of the water. Cobbled streets. And hurrah! The narrow streets on each side of the canal are one way thoroughfares. So cars can’t sneak up on you from behind. But since this is Amsterdam, it pays not to be too confident. The bicycle brigade are subject to no laws at all and a one-way street is only one way, to them, for other people!
Anyway, I took quite a few pictures in the Brouwersgracht, including one of a little white kitten which peeped longingly through a ground floor window at me. Alas, when I clicked the shutter she chose that moment to show me her back end instead of her sweet face, so I have no kitty pic from the Brouwersgracht. Just some very nice houses and bridges. And a kitty memory.

The highlight of my Friday walk was a visit to another tourist site. Well, it should be a tourist site, but not too many tourists seem to have found their way there. I had noticed the ‘Van Loon Museum’ on the map, and I had vague memories of a certain van Loon being an old Dutch painter (or was it van something else, there are after all so many of them), also I remembered a certain fat green book that used to grace my father’s bookshelf. I think it was called THE ASCENT OF MAN, but anyway it was by one Hendrik van Loon. (And only many years later did I find out it wasn’t about mountain climbing – an excusable error given that much of my father’s library was). But I didn’t go there. Then, a couple of days later when I was lamenting the lack of greenery on view and the fact that Amsterdam houses have no front gardens -- I soon found out that what they lack in front gardens they make up for with back ones – Bert-Jan asked if I had visited the van Loon House. I had to admit ‘no’. So when I saw from my inseparable street-map that I was but a gracht or two away from said house I determined to pay a call on the van Loons. Well, the house is still there but that last Mr van Loon died in October, and he left his family house to be the museum it had already been since the death of his grandparents in 1973.
What it is, is the house of a prosperous C18th Dutchman – the original inhabitant was Ferdinand Bols, the artist, later the wealthy merchant van Loon bought it – which has been maintained as, or restored to, pretty much what it was in the C19th. Its all tastefully and unexaggeratedly done, and is agreeably ‘true to life’. And it has a delightful medium-sized garden, all box hedges and patterns. The garden, too, had its guardian kitty. A rather fat relative of Minnie who is clearly utterly used to being photographed. So I did. And I gave her a big pat which she can transfer to Minnie by cataphone. (On the way out, I noticed that the cat has even been made into a postcard!).
The van Loon house isn’t spectacular in any way. It’s just nice, atmospheric, interesting and well worth 6 euros and an hour or so of one’s time.
PS Hendrik van Loon doesnt seem to have belonged to this family. A large family tree in the hall includes a Hendrik but I see from good old Google that I’m a good few generations out.
There are actually four family trees in the hall, one in gold paint on wood, and three decorative ones on parchment, which makes great play of everyone’s family escutcheon. I thought this was typical merchant stuff. Nouveau riche aspirations. But it appears that an early Frouw van Loon was a kind of social secretary and amanuensis to the current Queen of the Netherlands, so the family was doubtless into who was who in a big way.

Friday had another highlight too. Kevin took me across down and down a canal or two tov isit the Amsterdam Theatre Museum. Its an attractive place, housed in a pretty old Dutch building of which some of the interior has been retained. Part of the Museum is devoted to ‘exhibitions’. One was a fascinating one, a biographical show on an innovative Dutch scenic artist who ended up as a designer of classy lighting fixtures and an interior decorator. I’m totally furious that I’ve completely forgotten his name, for I’d like to have Googled him and read more. (PS I Googled the Museum and there it is! His name is Frits Lensfelt and the building is apparently memorable and C17th.. good old Google.). This exhibit was much more successful than most Theatre Museum exhibits I have seen in one part of the world and another. And much much more successful than their other one, something called ‘Backstage’ which consisted of fragments on the various people other than the actors who make up a play. No section was dealt with adequately because all were dealt with a little. There were also several ‘talking heads’, filmed interviews for the TV age person who can’t take in a classic museum. Fortunately they were in Dutch so I was dispensed for listening to the pontificating!
The other part of the Museum is its Library. Their collection is grand, but like other performing arts libraries in non-English-speaking countries, decidedly idiosyncratic. You find really rare C19th books, which many a British or American library does not have, sharing a shelf with surprising copies of some of the worst modern incompetents and ghastlies (no names no pack drill). And yet some good and standard books are missing. Also, the choice of which books – nominally the cream of the collection – go under’ reference’ rather than being available for loan, is sometimes curious.
I can’t complain. Three of my works are on the Reference shelf: the 2 volume ENCYCLOPAEDIA, BRITISH MUSICAL THEATRE and MUSICAL THEATRE ON RECORD. Get the connection? My British books. Not one of my American books has made it. Lack of enterprise or imagination by my various American publishers?
ASPECTS OF LOVE, which seems to be everywhere, is on the open shelves.
Alas, no MUSICALS, and no Lydia and Willie, all of which are actually in the Amsterdam bookshop .. but they have the main ones, which pleases me a lot.
And, as a cherry, they have Ian’s TOP OF THE BILL too.


Saturday, Kevin and I did another walk around town and I had a small eye-opener. And I don’t mean my first taste of a Dutch hotdog (manufactured in a machine so that the meat AND the mustard are already inside .. very handy and unmessy and really quite tasty). The morning papers had been full of a new book, a biography of an early C20th Dutch pioneer in what would now be glibly christened ‘gay lib’. It is a wholly serious social document of some weight, and all that seems surprising to me is that no-one has apparently got round to biographising the brave bloke before.
Kevin was most keen to read the hot-off-the-presses book, so we headed for a very large nearby bookstore. I was impressed to see that they already had it in stock. Alas, it was such a huge chunk of solid Dutch text (‘with no pictures and no conversations’) that Kevin, in spite of his amazingly quickly learned Netherlandish skills, couldn’t quite face it. So on we went. Soon we passed another, smaller bookshop. And, good grief. Why aren’t MY publishers like this? There was a huge pile of the new book, right in front of the shop! But there was a reason. This was a gay bookshop, and the new learned tome apparently counts as a ‘gay’ book! I found this quite funny. But there was funnier still when we went inside. A whole wall was devoted to ‘gay literature’. Proust, Gide, everything that Gore Vidal ever wrote whether gay in subject matter or not. Fiction, poetry, non-fiction the lot. It was so all-embracing I was almost surprised not to find myself there!
And the opposite wall? Magazines, videos, DVDs, picture books – from SEBASTIAN to ‘Tom of Finland’ to .. well, just every shape and degree of titillation literature and what I suppose counts as nothing more than hard pornography imaginable. I don’t suppose Proust or Vidal would have minded any of it, quite the contrary, but I was simply, and perhaps unfairly, mostly gently amused.
While Kevin leafed lightly through the stock, I glanced around at the clientele. I don’t think most of them were there looking for a copy of A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU. Surprisingly many were gay girls (for whom the variety of literature though apparently not movies is much more limited). The rest? Well no-one needs a dirty raincoat these days, but lets just say there was quite a lot of young scruff. Hmmm. Good Lord I wonder what they thought of ME with Tom of Finland in my hand? But I don’t think anyone was looking at me. Not even at Kevin.
So Kevin didn’t buy the biography, and I resisted the temptation (??) to invest in Tom of Finland – after all there was no space in my red bag, and should one be unable to live without them, one can probably buy his famous cartoon books of improbably shaped males in Christchurch NZ!

The other purpose of our trip to ‘town’ was to book a restaurant for my final night in Amsterdam’s sort-of-thankyou ‘Dinner for the Golden Boys’. Number one on our list was the Resturant Haesje Claes at nos 273-5 Spuistraat. Whatever that means. It looked charmingly cosy, even though the licence plate confirmed that it held 280 people. And even though it did, it was booked out. However, when we got back to the flat with the bad news B-J picked up the phone…
That night we dined at the Haesje Claes.
Now Gerry Bordman always said that I didn’t care about food. Well, I know I was not always up to comprehending the niceties and special qualities of some of the famous dinners to which he treated us all those years ago in the south of France. And I know I can just as well get by on bread rolls and cheese, as I did in Jersey, but … food can still give me a memorable moment or two to match up to my most fondly remembered lunch on the beach in Rhodes in 1972..
This I think was one of them.
Of course, the atmosphere and the company helped .. for the place is delightful – divided into a number of rooms so that the numbers of people being served are not evident, and tastefully and characterfully ‘old Dutch’ designed (good grief it may have even been genuinely antique!)– the service was charming and bang-on .. and the food?
Heaven.
I was determined to eat ‘typically Dutch’. So I asked advice from our Dutchman. If I’d eaten everything he recommended I’d have burst. In the end I settled for Bloedwurst with caramelised apples and something else incomprehensible, and Kabeljaum. Black sausage and cod. I mean, talk about things you can’t get in New Zealand?????
Well, you can’t. Not like this anyway.
I’ve eaten black puddings in Britain, black sausage in New Zealand, boudin noir in France and loved it everywhere .. but if this is Dutch bloetwurst, then Dutch bloetwurst beats them all into a bag. Soft not stodgy, juicy not dry and fatty, delicious! And the accompanying sweet apples.. with just a hint of local Amstel bier .. perfect.
Then .. cod. Cabillaud. Baked. Hard to be original there? But original isn’t necessary when the fish is made up of soft, tasty flakes 8 to 10 centimetres square, flakes that just fall apart into a delicious little mixture of chopped and shredded vegetables and a light mustard sauce…
Plus one or two of Kevin’s perfectly cooked pommes frites (sic!)
And a little more beer

Haesje Claes (she’s not the owner, merely an ancient Dutch lady with a buzzword name) goes down in my book of memories as a memorable meal..

(see http://www.haesjeclaes.nl/?language=en_EN which tells you more than I can!)

We closed down our meal with something called a mokum coffee. It was 4.95 a glass, so it was evident that it was something a little more than plain coffee. Which it was. I deeply suspect it of being 50 percent Advocaat or something equally Dutch and potent. But it was delicious.

And when I say that three of us ate for 107.00 euros (plus alas the still current 10 percent ‘tip’) – ie something like $200 NZ -- including beefsteaks for the young folk and 8 beers mostly for me – I reckon we did pretty well.

B-J leaped on his bicycle to head back to base, but Kevin had more in store for me. A little glimpse of Amsterdam by night. And delightful it is. The canals and their bridges glittering with little lights .. it’s all too obvious to relate, but nevertheless delightful.
Since I had, up till now – give or take a colourful bookshop – still not seen anything of Amsterdam’s wholly (I now believe) exaggerated gay life, we passed down the best publicised – in the guide books – streets of gay bars. Kevin needed a pee, so we even popped into one. Well. If people come from all over to go to a place like that…?!
The lights were so erratic that you couldn’t see very much, the muzak was so loud you couldn’t hear anything at all, and the clients were sort of slumped around looking as if they were bored out of their minds. If they had any mind to be bored out of. Grim! Just about as witty, bright and sophisticated as the Westport pubs in December race week.
From then on, we just glanced through windows and doors. I value whats left of my hearing too much. And it had been too splendid an evening to tail away like a dying fish. Instead, it ended at 1.30 am, lounging on a big white sofa listening to the music of Stan Kenton …

Sunday morning, with my bags all packed, we went out for my last Amsterdam stroll A veritable stroll it was too. Not a determined walk. A wander around the Vondelpark. Sunday in the Park with Kevin. The sun was shining gently, the breeze was rippling the lake and making little stars where it met the sunshine, there were daffodils and bluebells, and nice young people lying on the grass, and jogging or roller-blading in the alleys. Not so many bikes as on weekdays, so the atmosphere was more relaxed. We strolled, we sat on a bench and watched the ducks go by. It was wonderfully peaceful, relaxed and civilised. Civilised. It’s a word that will always spring to my mind when I think again of Amsterdam.

I wonder why the teenaged (male) British gorms I saw on the plane on the way back go weekending there. Well, I suppose I know why they go. But I would have thought they could get all the drugs and blokes they are after on any street corner in whatever provincial English town they come from, without spending their dole on an air trip across the channel. But they seemed happy with their weekend in Gomorrah.
So why should I be grumpy about them.
After all, young men trekked to Soho, London for years, believing the old publicity that it was a den of delicious iniquity. Whereas it was just the place where Ian and I shopped for our vegetables and charcuterie.

I flew out of Amsterdam airport at 4.30pm. Yes! BMI Baby was – at last – on time! And, whats more, we arrived at EMA 2 minutes early! I was first to immigration – and dammit! I had to fill in a foreigner’s CARD! You would think those things were obsolete now. So I lost my leading place.. but aha! no luggage! So I was back in front as we hit the home turn and there was Johnny just arriving in the other direction! So we even got free parking.. (less than 10 mins)! Fate was liking me this week, I think.

It was about half an hour’s drive from EMA to Staffordshire. It looks less on the map, but there’s lots of wiggling about, and we didn’t go quite in a straight line, especially as there had been some vast motor cycle grand prix at Donnington (right on our way) which chose to disgorge its thousands of spectators at just the wrong minute.

The last part of our trip – once the brewing town of Burton had been passed – was truly beautiful. England at its best is just glorious.. why do I always think of London when I think of England.. crazy!

Down country lanes we went, past beautiful ancient houses both little and very large and finally at about 5.45 we pulled up the sweeping driveway of Hoar Cross Hall.

Ah

Hoar Cross Hall.

That’s another story.

I might get to write it after dinner tonight, sitting in one of those big leather chairs in the Long Gallery where the violinist plays, the champagne flows .. and wireless Internet works..
But right now its time for my first ‘facial’. The big attack on the bags under the eyes! Of which more anon

Much more, I hear you say.

Until soon

Love
Kurt